Pragmatism is a seatbelt. It might save your life, but it was never meant to drive the car.
The most practical advice in almost every situation is also the most limiting. Stay in the stable job. Don't risk the sure thing. Wait until you have more data. Make the conservative move. Be realistic.
This kind of thinking keeps you safe in the short term and mediocre in the long term. And most people don't notice the tradeoff until it's too late — until they've been "smart" their way into a career that's comfortable but completely unfulfilling.
The biggest breakthroughs in business, in careers, in anything — they don't come from the pragmatic move. They come from the person who saw something that didn't exist yet and bet on it anyway. Who made the call that looked crazy at the time and turned out to be exactly right. Who said yes when every practical voice in the room said wait.
That's not recklessness. There's a difference between being reckless and being bold. Reckless is ignoring all information. Bold is having the information, feeling the fear, and moving anyway because you believe in something that the data hasn't caught up to yet.
The people who build great things — great companies, great careers, great lives — almost universally have a moment in their story where they did the impractical thing. Where they left the safe harbor before the next one was in sight. Where they trusted the vision more than the spreadsheet.
Pragmatism has its place. Use it for tactics. Use it for execution. Use it to manage risk once you've already decided to take the leap.
But don't let it make the big decisions for you. Because the version of your career that pragmatism builds is the version that's fine. And fine is not what you're here for.